A base station positioning service for a mobile terminal such as a mobile phone is also referred to as a location based service (LBS, Location Based Service), which is a value added service for obtaining, from a network of an operator, for example, a GSM (Global System for Mobile communications, Global System for Mobile Communications) network, location information of a mobile terminal user, for example, longitude and latitude coordinates, and providing a corresponding service for the user with support from an electronic map platform, and is another mainstream positioning technology different from GPS (Global Positioning System, Global Positioning System) positioning and WiFi (Wireless Fidelity, Wireless Fidelity) positioning. Compared with the GPS, the base station positioning has an advantage of supporting positioning indoors and in a badly sheltered area. Compared with the WiFi positioning, because coverage of a global mobile wireless communications network is far better than coverage of a WiFi network, the base station positioning also has a relatively wider application field.
In the prior art, a positioning technology based on a single cell ID (Identity, identity) is usually used in a base station positioning service. A minimum division unit of a cellular network may be referred to as a “cell”, and different cells form a currently universal wireless mobile communications network in a cellular combination manner. After a mobile terminal is registered with a wireless mobile communications network, a currently registered cell ID may be reported to a location service provider, and after searching, according to the reported cell ID, a database storing location information such as a longitude and a latitude that are corresponding to each cell, the location service provider may obtain location information of a cell in which the terminal is currently located, and then the location service provider sends the location information to the mobile terminal, so as to complete the positioning.
However, precision of the positioning by using this technology depends on a radius and coverage density of a cellular cell, and the positioning precision is not high, especially in many areas in which base stations are relatively dispersedly distributed, and a cell has a relatively large radius, which may even reach thousands of meters. This means that the positioning precision can be roughly thousands of meters only, and the precision is much lower.